The story of how Kirill Dmitriev (45) came up with the idea to stand behind the Sputnik V vaccine has a lot of poetry in it. But it seems to be much more prosaic than it sounds. His wife, Natalija Popova, who, according to the Russian media, has long known Alexander Ginzberg, the head of the "Gamaleja" research institute and the author of the vaccine against covid-19, followed this process with special personal interest.
In the end, Mrs. Popova was one of the first to get involved with Sputnik V last year. And she was the one who convinced her husband Dmitriyev to take over economic support and marketing for the vaccine as the head of the billion-dollar Russian Direct Investment Fund (RFPI).
How this agreement was reached in the Dmitriyev family is not known in detail. But it is well known that Mrs. Popova - and this is where the story turns prosaic - studied together with Katarina Tikhonova at Moscow State University. And Mrs. Tikhonova, who was born in Dresden, is not just anybody.
Behind this inconspicuous surname hides the daughter of the boss of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, who has the main say in the university's Innovation Fund. Tikhonova is the president there, and Popova is her deputy. The fund weighs 1,7 billion dollars. The Tikhonov family and the married couple Dmitrijev-Popova are also excellent family friends in private, and they often spend vacations together.
Kirill Dmitriyev (45) was also delighted with the vaccine, which his wife praised. He personally christened the vaccine, giving it the name Sputnik V, to remind the whole world of the first satellite in space that the USSR sent in 1957. Before the USA. The marketing message is clear: even with the corona vaccine, Russia is better than America.
Today, a few months later, it is clear that Dmitriyev and his fund RFPI really had a good sense when they gave the vaccine from Novosibirsk Vektor, the largest virus laboratory in the world, priority over other Russian covid-vaccines. Evil tongues say that perhaps the corona escaped from this laboratory when part of its facilities exploded in mid-September 2019. But in the meantime, it is clear: after the Sputnik V vaccine was initially ridiculed by the West, it is gaining acceptance day by day - not only in developing countries.
A few days ago, a preliminary analysis published in the professional journal "The Lancet" showing that after the second dose of the Sputnik V vaccine, the effectiveness of protection against corona increases to 91,6%, brought a turn in the perception of public opinion, so German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU ) as well as the head of the European Commission Baroness Ursula of Lajen (CDU) showed interest in her, provided that Russia publishes the appropriate data.
In the meantime, it is being considered to start the production of the Sputnik V vaccine in Germany, and in a recent interview with Welt, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz also announced this for Austria.
That's why Russia, which is in a constant clinch with the West in other fields, achieved such a rare success in medicine, everyone in Moscow clearly attributes it to the financial management of Kirill Dmitriyev. He was the man who dispelled initial doubts about this vaccine and decisively took over its marketing.
And thus brought the Kremlin an unprecedented success in the image abroad. "Dmitriyev has been influential before," says Alexei Makarkin, deputy head of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies in an interview with Welt. "And only now, as Mr. Sputnik V”. Of course, it helped that he has direct contact with Putin, or as they say in Russia: "access to his body", explains Makarkin.
"But the decisive thing was that Dmitriyev - together with the scientist Ginzberg - showed unusual courage in Russia to dare to accelerate the development of the vaccine". Traditionalist Russian and Soviet scientists would never engage in such a risky operation.
And if Dmitriyev's name is heard by the general public only now, because of the Sputnik V vaccine, he has long been known in economic circles. In 14, the World Economic Forum named this native Ukrainian, who left for California in the USA at the age of 2010, as one of the most promising Young Global Leaders.
Talented guy
In the USA, he studied economics at Stanford, and then received an MBA degree at Harvard. After that, he was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and then a manager at the world's leading consulting firm, McKinsey. Then he managed his offshore constructions in Cyprus for the Ukrainian top-oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of the President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.
After that, he moved to Moscow, where in 2011 Putin entrusted him with managing the $10 billion RFPI fund, whose task is to attract foreign co-investors in Russian state projects.
With his remarkable talent for building relationships and winning people over, Dmitriev quickly rose up the ladder of Russian power and became a household name in the Moscow establishment, one of his former partners told Welt.
Putin's personnel policy is designed to transfer responsibility to people from Generation II, which is connected to the fact that Putin never allowed anyone from his generation to make any significant ascent. Dmitriyev understood this well and became one of the first young experts who managed to expand his influence on the control centers in recent years.
He perfectly knows the rules of the game, the first of which is that political ambition is an absolute taboo, and he also knows that professionalism and determination in one's field is highly valued at the top of the Kremlin pyramid.
Dmitriyev is not the only one who realized this. The same category belongs to Aleksander Novak (49), the long-time Minister of Energy of Russia, and today the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the raw materials sector. Novak proved his professionalism and determination when, in 2016, together with Saudi Arabia, he founded Opec Plus, a cartel of oil producers extended by Russia, which was of strategic importance for the Kremlin, as it gave Moscow the opportunity to directly and equally decide in this central body of the oil market.
Dmitriev proves the same because he works "more or less successfully" with state fund money, says economist Igor Nikolaev, director of the Moscow Institute for Strategic Analysis.
Today, ninety percent of all direct investments in Russia come through Dmitry's RFPI fund and its foreign partners: primarily from the Middle East and Asia. Europe, due to sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, does not play a big role. Since 2014, the rift between Europe and Russia has deepened.
However, Dmitriyev is important for Russia and in the direction of the West, because - in addition to speaking perfect English - he understands the Western mentality, explains his already mentioned former partner. Political scientist Makarkin formulates it this way: "Dmitriyev knows how to work with both sides, and in addition enjoys Putin's trust."
It is no coincidence that in 2017 it was Dmitriyev who tried to open an unofficial channel for talks with the inner circle of the then US President Donald Trump: his trade minister Wilbur Ross in the 1990s as a businessman was connected to a Russian equity fund, in whose management Dmitriyev worked.
Nothing came of that unofficial channel - it was dismantled during the investigation into alleged Russian influence on the US election.
(Die WELT) Translation: Mirko Vuletić
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